


The Winter Oracle

by inlovewithnight



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-27
Updated: 2008-04-27
Packaged: 2017-10-15 15:06:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/162040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight





	The Winter Oracle

The party ends in pieces. The Admiral leaves first, the graceful bowing-out of authority willing to let out of sight be out of mind. Then the pilots with first-shift CAP, then the ones who just crawled off the last CAP, the scattered handful who were just there for the booze and never quite forgave Lee Adama for mutiny or New Caprica or Baltar or some other damn thing that doesn't mean anything anyway. Not to Maggie, at least. What good does it to do to look back? All there is to find there is pictures on a wall and spaces where graves ought to be.

She takes a drink from the last bottle at hand and shakes her head, pushing her hair back off her forehead and frowning down at the patterns of condensation and spilled liquor on the tabletop. She can almost see something there, a picture, a message, just out of reach. An answer. If she just looks a little closer...

A shadow falls over the table and she blinks, looking up to see the man of the hour half-falling into the chair across from her. "This seat taken?" he asks, smiling slightly--always slightly, with him, always that crooked half-grin unless a genuine gods-damned miracle has occurred--and raising his own bottle to his mouth.

"Is now, I guess," she says, tilting her head, her fingers still tangled in her hair. "I don't have to call you sir anymore, do I?"

"Guess not." He shrugs and sets his drink down, then points at her with an unsteady hand. "Tell me something."

"About what?"

"You're the pilots' oracle. The woman with the scriptures."

She laughs, shaking her head and picking up her bottle again. "I'm the only one who knows how to read, that's all."

"You believe."

He's looking at her more intently than he should be able to, this late into the party. "Okay, fine. I believe. What do you want me to tell you?"

"I don't know. Something...oracular."

She lifts her bottle up to the light and studies the amount left. Not nearly enough. "Frak off, Apollo."

"Sorry." He breaks off his stare, and she breathes more easily. "Just the ambrosia talking, I guess."

"That's because it was ambrosia brewed in a coolant tank. I hope you're ready to go blind." She runs her finger down the side of the bottle, through the drops of water there. "Not as much of a problem if you do now, I guess."

"Ah. I knew you'd have your finger on the pulse of the bitterness." He leans back in his chair. "You always have all the news. So what exactly are they all saying? How much do they hate me down in the racks?"

She looks over her shoulder across the room, where a couple of Viper jocks from Pegasus--they're not supposed to think of each other as separate crews anymore, and haven't for a long time now out in the sky where it counts, but habits die hard and Maggie's a firm believer in sharp lines and good fences--are placing bets on an arm-wrestling match between two guys who are too drunk to sit up straight. "There's a word for this, you know."

"For what?"

"This kind of party."

"You mean besides a decommissioning?"

"Boedromia." She rolls the word around her mouth, relishing the archaic syllables coated in booze. "The festival of Apollo Boedromios, the helper in distress."

He frowns, shifting a little in his seat. "I've never heard of that one."

"Nobody has. I think it was only still on the calendar in the most rural and scary parts of Geminon." She stares down at the liquid on the table again, still looking for that elusive answer. "And in a bunch of books I read when I was in school."

"So what does Boed..." He waves his hand. "...that thing celebrate?"

"It's a military festival." She looks up at him and shrugs. "Thanking the god for his assistance in war."

His smile has faded away, leaving that blank, stony look all the pilots are familiar with, the one he got when he was passing on an order from the brass that he didn't agree with, or when Starbuck had pissed everybody off again, or he was just in a foul mood and waiting for someone to step wrong so he could take it out on them. "I guess that's appropriate."

"You want to know some other things most people don't know about Apollo?"

"What the frak are you two doing talking about theology? This is supposed to be a party." Helo drags another chair up to the table, spinning it around and straddling it backwards, shaking his head at them both. "You're killing the mood."

"What mood? There's no mood." Lee nods over at the corner of the room, where the Viper boys are dragging their buddies out of their chairs and toward the door. "Just the three of us."

"Doesn't mean we can't have a good time." Helo tilts his chair back and reaches for a few empty glasses on another table, producing a flask from his pocket with his other hand. "And one more round."

Maggie kills her bottle and drops it to the floor, not willing to let it disturb the patterns on the table. "Theological trivia is a good time."

"I bet you ten credits you couldn't say that word again if you tried." Helo grins and fills a glass for her.

"Theological. But keep your money. I don't need it." She takes a sip and makes a face; wherever Helo's getting his booze, it's a step below cooling-tank ambrosia. "You want to hear it or not?"

"Absolutely." Lee nods, watching her again, his eyes steady and clear like he knows something. "I'm listening."

"There's the oracle at Delphi." She holds up one finger, then another. "And at Delos."

"Everybody knows about those," Helo says, shaking his head. "Drink up, Maggie."

"And." She jabs him in the arm with her fingers and then holds up a third. "At Patara."

Lee frowns, glancing down at the table and then back at her. "I'm not familiar with it."

"It's the home of the winter oracle. Where the god goes when he leaves Delos." She can feel that her smile is sharp-edged and odd, and tries to hide it behind her glass. "When he leaves home, what made him, where he comes from."

"It's a little late for symbolism, Maggie," Helo says, reaching over to brush his fingers over her shoulder. "Don't you think?"

"Never too late for that." She shrugs, failing to dislodge his hand but not trying that hard, either. "The oracle was delivered six months of the year at Delos, six months at Patara. Summer and winter." She holds up her glass and rocks it slowly from side to side, tilting the level of the liquid. "The god goes back and forth, dispensing His wisdom...knocking up priestesses...scaring the livestock..."

"What does this have to do with me?" Lee's voice is sharp now, close to being defensive, and he takes a quick swallow of his drink before he speaks again. "What's the symbolism?"

"You're the one who asked me to be an oracle." She shrugs again, and Helo's hand does fall away this time. "This is what oracles do, isn't it?"

"Talk too much and not make any sense?" Lee shakes his head and looks away. "Yeah, I guess that's about right."

"Speak too many truths that nobody wants to hear." She closes her eyes and tilts her head back, rolling her shoulders to feel the stretch. Her body is humming, warm and alight with liquor and exhaustion and the familiar itch under her skin that she suspects they all have anymore, the adrenaline addiction, the need to chase something wild and electric and new. "And it does make sense, if you think about it, and listen." She reaches her arms up over her head, rotating her shoulders slowly until they pop, curving her palms to point toward the ceiling. "The god is going out, the god is leaving, and we will be left behind."

"Maggie," Helo says in a tone of concern and uncertainty, just as Lee puts his glass down hard enough to rattle against the table and says "This is something I have to do. It's important. I need to do this."

"Of course you do." She stands up, her balance wavering for a moment before she catches it. She steps off into a slow orbit of the table, counting her footfalls, each one shaped with exaggerated care and grace. As she passes Helo, she runs her hand up his arm; it's meant to be a reassuring touch, but from the look on his face it's anything but. She lets the motion trail off with the back of her fingers caressing his neck, then takes the next step, looking at Lee again. "Gods do what they need to do, and we live with it. That's how it works."

The harsh lights bounce off the dull surface of the table and set the scattered drops of liquid aglow, impossible to ignore from the corner of her eye. The patterns actually seem clearer that way, out of her direct line of sight. She knows it's a tease and that if she turns her head they'll disappear again into spilled ambrosia and scattered water, and so she only studies them indirectly and averted, hoping the answer will come to her in secret.

Lee's face is flushed, the blood rising under his skin in time with his frustration and defensive anger. "So what do you want me to do? I'm not actually a frakking god. I'm just trying to...frak, this is a hell of a going-away party, Racetrack." He reaches for his glass again, realizes it's empty, and knocks it from the table to the floor. "I'm not coming back this time. I'm done with this, I'm gone, so what do you want me to do?"

Her balance wavers, just slightly, a tremor of uncertainty in her legs that shifts her feet. "What do _I_ want?"

His expression twists into a sneer, but without malice in his eyes, leaving it a grimace like a mask over his face. "You're the frakking oracle."

"I think you should both stop it." Helo stands up, shaking his head. "This is just getting...weird, and we're all drunk, and we should just stop and call it a night." Maggie reaches out her hand blindly and he takes it, squeezing her fingers. "I'll help you back to the rack, Maggie, we'll just..."

It's easier to pull him close than it should be; his reflexes are dulled from the ambrosia too. "I'm not done yet."

"You should be," Helo says, looking grimly at both of them. "This isn't accomplishing anything."

She leans back against him, closing her eyes tight against the rush in her veins and the pounding of her heart in her ears. "It could."

"How?" The derision in Lee's voice could cut glass. "You can keep talking about crazy semi-religious nonsense until we all pass out?"

She licks her lips, tasting the stale ghost of the liquor. "When a god leaves, he should pass his power on to another."

"The Admiral already did that," Helo points out.

"No." She shakes her head sharply and opens her eyes again, looking first at Lee, who has pushed his chair back from the table but not quite managed to rise. She tilts her head enough to look up at Helo, his face still set in that gentle concern, and she wishes there was some way to make them both less blind, some kind of an FTL jump for understanding that would make them see the things that she sees, encoded in the drops on the table and dancing in the light. "He ordered it, but it isn't _done_. You need a rite for that. A ritual. Symbolism."

"You want us to take our clothes off and dance around naked for the gods, like Geminese hill people?" Lee laughs and throws his hands in the air. "Or the Sagittarons trying to turn back the frakking clock, so we can all live in an imaginary golden age when the Lords of Kobol walked among us and everybody died of plague or starvation before they were thirty."

She blinks slowly, resting her head against Helo's chest. "Not quite."

"A symbolic exchange." Helo's arm tightens around her waist. "That the kind of thing you're talking about, Maggie?"

She tilts her head again and smiles. "Knew you were smarter than you looked."

He smiles back, sliding his hand over her stomach. "If we do that, will you go to bed?"

"Sure." She looks at Lee again, raising her eyebrows in question. "Well?"

"I'm an atheist," he says, "which everyone seems to forget."

"Then you don't have anything to lose." She catches Helo's wrist and gently pushes his arm away, then steps toward Lee, moving in close and straddling him on the chair, gripping the back of it over his shoulders to keep her balance. She settles against him warm and close and without a trace of shame, biting her lip against laughter as his eyes go wide.

"I thought you meant an exchange as in..." He clears his throat roughly. "I don't know, giving him my rank pin or shaking hands or something."

"Gods are a little more creative than that." She traces her fingers along his jaw, delighting in the clean curve of the bone and the scrape of stubble against her skin. "Or maybe a little more literal."

"Maggie..." Helo's voice is right on the edge of scolding, getting ready to give the bad little pilot a lecture, and she honestly can't stand the thought of it. Lee's lips are parted, his mouth warm and red and inviting her to lean in and kiss him. It shuts Helo up, and keeps Lee from talking, either, either one of which would have been a perfectly good reason in its own even if she didn't want to do it just because it felt good.

She shifts her weight and presses closer to him, rocking her hips against his, feeling her way around until the friction falls into place and he makes a little noise against her mouth. She would laugh if she could, at how she can practically read his mind ( _oh frak, she means it_ , he's thinking, and she wants to tell him _of course I frakking mean it_ , but it's easier just to keep kissing, and more fun, and _better_ ) and at the way she can hear Helo clearing his throat and shuffling his feet behind her. Always the one who needs a gods-damned engraved invitation.

She breaks off the kiss and sits up straight again, smiling at Lee and then looking over her shoulder at Helo. "Well?"

"You are six different kinds of trouble, Maggie," he says, rubbing his hand over his chin. "You know that, right?"

"If you can't see it as a theological necessity--" and this time she does stumble over the word, just a little, but neither of them seems to notice "--then you have to at least admit it would be fun. Hell of a way to end the party."

Helo looks at her, eyes narrowed slightly. She imagines she can hear the gears turning inside his head. She holds her hand out to him, and after a moment he takes it, stepping close to them and leaning over her shoulder. "Remind me what happens if we fail at a theological necessity?"

"Very bad things." She shifts against Lee again, just enough to prompt another sound as she cups her hand around Helo's jaw and kisses him. "The end of the world, maybe."

"Can't have that." He closes his eyes and breathes her in for a moment, then glances at Lee, who exhales in a sharp huff of breath and then laughs helplessly.

"You're both insane. This is insane."

"Welcome to our lives, Adama." Maggie leans in and kisses him again, slowly and deeply, taking her time. "Where the frak have you been?"

Helo's hand slides up and down her back, warm and solid pressure against her spine, leaving her rocking forward and back, arching into his hand and then pressing against Lee. She slides her hand down between them, fumbling with Lee's trousers until she gets them open and can slip her hand inside.

"Maggie," Helo murmurs in her ear, and she glances at him, licking her lips before he covers them with his own, kissing her and sliding his arm around her waist again, his hand sliding down the line of her wrist and gently guiding her hand away from Lee's cock. The protest from Lee in response is quickly cut off as Helo replaces her hand with his, wrapping it around Lee hot and tight and stroking him slowly.

"Frak." Lee tilts his head back and bites his lower lip, his face flushing darker. "Helo...f-frak."

Maggie closes her eyes as Helo's other hand settles over her breast, his thumb rubbing over her nipple through the worn fabric of her bra. "So much trouble," he whispers in her ear as she rests her head on his shoulder. He's pressed flush against her back, hot and hard against her, and she rubs back against him, her breath catching as his hand tightens in response.

She feels Lee's fingers skimming along the edge of her pants, brushing the skin of her stomach just enough to make the muscles tense. He presses his hand over her crotch, rubbing against her slowly through the fabric, teasing, until she growls in frustration under her breath.

Helo laughs and kisses her jaw. "Don't frak around, Lee. She'll kick your ass."

"She'd have to catch me first," he says, his breathing rough and unsteady as Helo strokes him faster. He gets the first button of her fly undone, but falters on the second, his fingers clenching the fabric and his body tensing under her.

She leans in and kisses him, capturing the rush of breath and half-choked sounds as he comes, bucking up against her. She counts to sixty in her head, teasing her tongue against his and sucking at his lower lip, managing to hold on to the last thread of her patience for that long before she rolls her hips into his hands by way of reminder.

"Sorry," he says, grinning at her and slipping the second button. She doesn't answer, just closes her eyes again and tightens her hands on the back of the chair as he pushes the wet, threadbare shorts aside and slides his fingers against her, slow and still so damn teasing, tracing the flesh before coming back up and rubbing at her clit.

Helo's hand is inside her bra now, his calluses rough against sensitive skin. He pinches her nipple and she twists a little, hissing between clenched teeth and riding down against Lee's hand. "This what you wanted, Maggie?" Helo says in her ear, his tongue brushing against the curve of cartilage. "Is this the kind of rite you meant?"

"Gods." Her voice is rough and breathless, her control faltering as Lee slides his fingers deep inside her, thrusting steadily while his thumb keeps circling her clit. "Just...frak, don't stop."

Helo laughs, the sound breaking a little. He's still pressed hard against her back, his hips rocking a little in an unconscious need for friction. "Not a chance."

She makes a helpless sound as he slides his hand over her other breast, the strap of her bra digging into her shoulder as he stretches the fabric. He nuzzles her neck, grazing his teeth along oversensitized nerves. Her stomach tightens and she arches her head back as she comes, her knees tightening against Lee's hips.

Lee eases his hand away, then kisses her again, quickly, before Helo lifts her up and off the chair. She struggles a little against his hands, in surprise more than protest, and he sets her down on her feet, steadying her. "Maggie," he says, his voice edging closer to a plea than she expects. She can't help but laugh, which makes him take a step back, his face darkening.

She grabs his hand and pulls him in for a kiss. "Dumbass," she murmurs against his mouth, tugging him with her as she steps back toward the table. "Just let me catch my breath, huh?"

"Thank the gods," he breathes, and she laughs again, releasing him and pushing her trousers and shorts down her thighs. She glances back at the table as he sheds his own clothes; the drops of liquid are still shining brightly under the glaring lights, hinting at the same mysteries and secrets just out of range.

She reaches out and drags her fingers across the table, breaking whatever the pattern might have been. Frak mystery.

Helo's hands settle around her waist again and she lets him boost her up on the edge of the table, then guide her down on her back. The table is shocking against her skin, the scattered liquid even colder, stinging her overheated nerves. She wraps her legs around Helo's waist and settles her hands on his shoulders, drawing him close enough to kiss. It's a demanding kiss, all teeth and aggression as he slides inside her and thrusts deep. She feels the water and liquor soaking into her bra and her hair, and knows she'll be combing the smell of this crazy made-up rite out of her hair for days and catching ghosts of it on every piece of clothing she pulls out of her locker. If anyone notices, they'll be mad at her for wasting the booze, and not understand why she laughs in their faces.

She knows that if she turns her head, she'll see Lee watching them, still sprawled in his chair, his eyes on the curve of Helo's back and the line of Maggie's body against the table. Part of her wishes he would come over to them, touch and kiss again, make another point of contact. That was never his way to begin with, though, and even less here and now, where the story they told themselves was that this was a transition, a last action before he goes out and is gone.

Helo's hands are warm and heavy on her skin. She digs her heels hard into the backs of his thighs and her fingers into his arms, urging him closer, deeper, the rush under her skin still not enough to satisfy. She wants to feel _more_ , to feel everything before it all flames out and is over.

They have to put the room back in some kind of order after, wiping the tables clean and setting the chairs all back in order. "Hell of a party," Lee says, his face still just slightly more red than usual. "I have a feeling that isn't a, uh, standard decommissioning."

"Like anybody would mention it if it was," she points out, grabbing her sweatshirt from where it fell hours before at the triad game and shrugging back into it. "That's pretty much the only rule of secret rituals, you have to keep them _secret_."

"Good point." They all stand for a moment, looking around the room and over at the hatch, and finally at each other.

"So," Helo says finally. "Did we save the universe, Maggie?"

"Why are you asking me?"

"You're the oracle, aren't you?" Lee says, raising an eyebrow.

"Oh. Right, right." She tilts her head back and thinks for a moment, assuming an expression of exaggerated concentration. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure things will go okay. Or, well, not any worse than they would've done anyway."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Helo mutters, nudging her toward the hatch. "Time to go sleep it off, I think."

"Any final words of wisdom for the god who is going out?" Lee asks, pausing with his hand on the handle. "Oh wise oracle?"

She looks at him for a moment, her exuberance faltering a bit as she studies his face. He looks different, somehow, a distance in his eyes, a new set to his jaw.

 _Be careful the games you play, Margaret,_ she thinks, swallowing hard against the sudden twist in her stomach. _Sometimes the gods really do like to play along, and they have their own frakking set of rules, hidden in plain sight._

"Racetrack?" he asks, a hint of concern in his voice.

She shakes her head and reaches past him, turning the handle herself. "You don't have anything to worry about, Adama. The gods always do all right, wherever they go. It's up to the rest of us to watch our step and stick together until they come around again."  



End file.
